Cleanup after the battle was won turned out to be the easiest part.
Even though of the Thirteen who strode out, only half remained unwounded, many of the survivors found themselves tapped out, depleted, and otherwise taking a moment to rest and celebrate in the aftermath of the Miracle of Pleuron--as people were already calling the whole debacle.
Rina wasn't quite so wiped out--which left the duty of initial cleanup and cataloguing of the gains to her. The destruction of a Core Formation Elder invariably led to a wealth of critical resources even beyond what could be salvaged from the corpse. Mostly a Mustard Seed Bag--something akin to the storage treasures employed by the best and most successful experts which simply compressed objects to fit in a small space without reducing their weight.
Funny how these things work--they probably called it something different back in their Sea, but the core principles of the most obviously useful tools ended up to be universal.
The inside of course contained a great number of miscellaneous treasures--dutifully sorted out and arranged for distribution--the handful of slain enemy Foundation Establishment experts had their goods sorted out to be sent to Ferenike--who volunteered to play quartermaster and ensure the Legionnaires who fought received a suitable bonus for their efforts holding the wall.
Altogether--Rina would be lying if she said she was fully satisfied with the take. Even though a a Core Formation Elder, the fake healer barely carried anything of value. A strange fiddle--likely some measure of wide scale treasure? She'd have Achille appraise it and see if it would be valuable for him--he put in the work of heroes keeping the wards intact until the battle began.
Slim pickings one and all--but at least the ones who had kept the Walls of Pleuron standing in the face of all of this would have enough treasures to make it worth their while--the rest of the Thirteen would have to settle for Contribution Points and the odd spare Spirit Stones lying around.
"Better than nothing, at least" Rina thought to herself, drawing the bag closed and turning aside, only to see a familiar figure approaching.
As it drew closer, the sense of "familiarity" remained unchanging. A similar shape, stripped of all depth, perhaps. Calling it an
impression would be almost too generous. Even the Qi that would otherwise stand out, the errant currents and flows and
tunes of the individuals aura was itself only an echo of what was. Like a tinny sound, nearly overwhelmed by the desert wind.
The second most emaciated woman that Rina had seen that today gradually approached, not stooped with age, but ground down and weathered, bright bronze once burnished now faded and patchy. Straw-like hair jerked in the desert breeze where golden tressels had stood proud and defiantly in a ponytail that stretched towards the heavens.
"Hey."
Even diminished, the Young Bell's voice carried clearly.
"Thought I could find ya here, Princess." Aretaphila Myia waved with her one free hand, her whip-thin limbs carrying her with no loss of strength nor bowed posture. She approached, her very self once so determinedly distinct and now suddenly
not. Unlike the majority of her dozen companions, Aretaphila had remained at Pleuron and helped manage the defense along with Achille in order to prepare for the next stage of the plan. A month of singing to keep the growing army of Fifth Sea hunters at bay while the final bastion was prepared.
A scheme that had been ruined, as the Legate had fled to aid the Grand Elder. A hope that had been dashed as Xiao Yi had fought his last terrible duel.
"Figured you'd loot the corpse immediately," Aretaphila's gaunt cheeks drew taut in wry amusement, "So I went for her bedroom." Her second stick-thin arm twitched, drawing attention to the small potted plant in her grasp.
"Catch."
Before it left it.
"Hwa?" Rina squeaked as the pot was thrown in the air--her hand lashed out with impossible speed, to bash it aside…
No, to catch it--the shift visible as her hand catches it, swaying to a stop as she looked it over.
"... It's a tree"
Rina blinked.
"It's not even a big tree"
A single giggle chimed, Aretaphila seeming to relax, "Maybe, but it's hungry ya know?" The Myia lifts the previously occupied limb as it moves with a quiet groaning of metal, "I'm a strong girl, but even I get tapped out every once in a while." She flexes, the groaning becoming a shriek of protest.
"Umm…" Rina blinked, and started patting through the pouches she had strapped to her side. She wasn't a botanist! This wasn't in her skillset!... Well, that's not fair, she did receive an elementary education on identification of spirit herbs in the field--if only to figure out if they were valuable or not. It was a very tiny tree and most tree-type herbs got bigger as they became more valuable, so it wasn't very impressive.
"You said you found this in the fanciest tent?" She asked, wracking decades old memories. Why would a
tree that wasn't especially pretty and didn't seem to be especially powerful qualify as something for a wealthy or powerful expert to hang onto?
A thought came to mind.
"If it was a valuable treasure"
She extended a strand of her Essence forward, making contact with the tree--and finding no spirit mark upon it. A casualty of the battle maybe?
The strand of Qi was drunk in hungrily--and the tree straightened up, leaves rustling in the wind all of a sudden.
"Oh, it's some kind of treasure I guess?" Rina mused. "You sure? Finders Keepers is a pretty fair rule."
As Rina's qi was drawn into the tree, something mysterious occurred; the other girl - a young woman really - seemingly relaxed, just a fraction. A tension that had permeated her form suddenly loosened, like a drawn out note finally terminating. She sighed.
"Looks like the little guy likes you well enough," Aretaphila's cheeks twitched as a gnarled, bony finger tapped her ear with a low ringing sound, "Was a bit worried he'd latch on to me for a bit, but…" The thinner girl's shoulders trembled in a commendable attempt at shrugging, "It's best that it goes to you, Princess."
The Demonic Tunes user meets her companion's eyes then, not in her typical cyclopean fashion.
What lies in the depths of those pupils is a singular determination. A
challenge that as Rina's is drawn to it, the barest spark of Heavenly Static crackles through the air.
"Why me though?" Rina tilted her head, taking the tree into hand. "I mean--you're great--people think you're amazing, and that song of yours can do way more than I can--all I can do is just hit things once in a while. That's
handy sometimes but I mean--I'm not
lacking for treasures. It's just…" She
felt the challenge being offered.
But she didn't understand it.
What was this even about?
Aretaphila tilted her head, her eyes squinting as if barely believing what she could see.
This was the Bronze Paragon? The strongest of her generation? The girl who had become everything the child she had used to be had dreamed of being herself?
An emaciated chest huffed out involuntarily, and a high, clear note of sheer mirth carried through the mostly silent battlefield.
"It's because you're
that kind of an idiot," Aretaphila said wryly, having fallen to her knees while grasping her chest from the cost of that single moment of laughter, "I'm a Demonic Tunes user, you know? And...I know a thing or two about how Qi moves, how it transmits as sound or signals. To communicate." She picks herself up from the sand beneath her, plodding towards Rina before gently resting a hand into the plants foliage.
"To
track."
Even now, that tiny plant was releasing minute vibrations of Qi, traveling through the dusty air. Like a single ringing note in search of a surface to bounce off of and produce an echo. Aretaphila was no botanist, she couldn't identify the plant itself. But she also was no fool. Her eyes raised again to meet Rina's own crimson pupils, seeing if she picked up the hint.
The ringing note… The Echo.
No
She looked at the tiny tree in her hand, eyes widening. A single object, barely looked like it mattered, in the center of the most richly appointed--and therefore highest ranked--cultivator here. Quite possibly the Elder that had just been slain. Valuable enough to be left here, but not useful in combat enough to keep it on her person--which meant it provided no benefits in a fight.
But…
One thing had always bugged her--even setting aside the ability of the enemy Super Experts who loomed as merciless enforcers of their dominance, the Fifth Sea's experts
always managed to gather together within a few months of the Trials beginning.
Without fail, they could not be tricked, trapped, or delayed from achieving that status. Bad luck didn't account for it, they were doing this
on purpose.
Never before had a Core Formation enemy been laid low by figures who
could not oppose them--there was no risk to them. They would not hide or dispose of their treasures because there was nothing to fear--simply stand up and watch the juniors suffer under the unending weight of an untiring siege.
Rina sent another line of Qi into the tree--and the wind rose--an empty void…
Then a jingling--two hundred kilometers northwest, three fleeing targets. Another ringing--to the east, Qi Condensation experts who were to join the siege train, unknowing of the collapse of their formation.
The wave of sound faded at five hundred kilometers, sketching out a map of fifty cultivators, echoing off of the tokens they all held.
"It's a divination tool" She mumbled. "To identify the location and place of their own disciples."
"Thought so," Aretaphila muttered back, at that distance even the most minute vibrations of sound were as clear as a temple gong to one such as her, "That kind of thing...It's no good for someone like me." A skeletal thumb jutted into a rail-thin chest, one dusty eye drawing closed, "I'm the backline. Support. I can't move fast enough to use that the right way, and I'll never be the hero that we need to lead the charge."
The Myia patted Rina's shoulder, sand and dust wafting upwards at the contact, "This belongs to someone who's going to be the face of our generation. The ability to save any of our Juniors who might be in need, who could possibly use it better than the future hero of our Clan?"
"I…" Rina hesitated for a moment. But nodded. "I mean… I don't…
feel like I did that much? It just wasn't…" She wiggled her free hand noncommittally. "It doesn't feel real, you know? I went in expecting the fight of my life just to buy time--but it's just… Everything came together, I just said a thing or two… And then everything happened one after another. Even now, they're cheering Magnus who struck, you for your songs, Ferenike for her leadership. Xiao Yi for his courage. I've heard them talking--I'm just…" She freezes. "I'm just some…
thing. I might get carried away and impress people from time to time, but it's not that we're lacking in champions. And it never really
sticks--I just… I just don't have the time to really stick around and make connections with anyone."
Aretaphila's remaining open eye narrowed at the haltering confession, the image of that day nearly a hundred years ago laying over the 12th Heavenstage warrior standing before her, and in that instant the weaker girl realizes something very,
very important.
"You
Strategos-damned
idiot!"
A sharp ring echoes out, accompanied by a much less audible metallic
crack. Originating from a point above Rina's head, an emaciated hand is held flat against her scalp, the limb clearly broken against Rina's own prodigious constitution. But if there is any pain from such a wound, none of it enter's Aretaphila's eyes as they bore into Rina's own from mere centimeters away.
"What are you doing with that kind of attitude, when you're trying to create
an entirely new world?" Hollowed out cheeks bloat in indignation, before rearing back into a truly ferocious headbutt that the Myia scion once again winds up on the worse end on, ferrous cracks leaking blood from her worn skin, "Of course a King stands apart! You think Old Gold
wants to be aloof and invincible? That the old man that gave us those jade slips so long ago made a game of finding them because it was
efficient?"
Aretaphila grits here teeth, grinding her forehead against the other girl as if trying to convey her thoughts through sheer physical force, "You're never going to get anywhere if you've convinced yourself that you're somehow supposed to be smaller than any one person when you're trying to surpass this
shitty world!." A low growling rises through the air, no musical note, the sound is a beastial, desperate and
challenging one, accompanied by the spitting and hissing of static.
"You can be bigger than
anyone. You can be bigger than
anything! You already know you can't do it alone, that's great! It's the perfect start!" The wounded, trembling girl's unharmed hand gripped Rina's shoulder even more firmly, her constitution groaning from the strain.
"But you can't be the change you want to see in the world if you hide behind other people. How am I supposed to give you a push forward if you aren't in front of me?!"
"It's
because I had to hide behind people that I'm so upset right now!" Rina finally loses her composure, snapping back at Aretaphila just…
Breaking herself while lashing out. "I'm
frustrated and
tired of all of this! That we have to scrabble around like bandits while the wicked live like princes and kings! The laws of this world falling gently on their shoulders no matter what kind of world they create for those who come after them!"
She waves her hands out, encompassing the fields of Pleuron. "How many
literal children did we face so far? How many more will still be injured and die because they had a chance to get
a little bit luckier as long as they were willing to murder? Even setting
aside our own losses! This is a continued atrocity at all times! And yet…" She closes her eyes, seeking to steady herself.
"And yet it keeps happening, and I'm just sitting here, continually hammering away to make sure my foundation is
beyond perfect before I take the plunge… I could break through any time I like at this point you know? Even here at the Twelfth Heavenstage--I can
feel it. The static that lashes out at me any time I let my defenses down, it's not beyond the level I could handle. I could
at any time surge to Foundation Establishment, relying on the strength I've accumulated to rocket to the heights of that realm. I could be
Core Formation within two to three hundred years!"
She shakes her head, and opens her eyes--
weight pushing back against the pressure. "And yet I have to keep hiding behind my seniors, smiling and putting up a good show, downplaying my thoughts so they aren't tempted to ask me to break through for their sake. Because I have
seen the fate of our experts--from ancient times when we were mighty to the retreat from the mountains. We are glorious--our shared blood granting us strength beyond our foes and able to fight ten to one and not find ourselves undone… And yet we keep losing--and it's not just the fault of the Heavens. We can win ten to one odds, yes. But can we win hundred to one? Thousand to one? There are
always more, and when our champions are overmatched and sacrifice themselves to bring down their foes? The ones they
missed invariably reap a toll on our people! It's not enough to be
strong. Nothing short of being
the strongest will be enough to reverse the fortunes of our Clan--and for that, I need to bite my tongue. To accept being the one who is
protected instead of the one who can
protect."
She stomps a foot down, a deep crater forming in the space the two Cultivators stood on, sinking them below sight.
"I'm tired of this world rejecting us for the sins of our forefathers" Rina whispered. "We've forged a realm in spite of our weakness that would be the envy of any, despite this damned barren desert. It is not enough. Our neighbours look on us with scorn and derision--our foes lick their chops and await our weakness. We've faced the Blood Path with more success and courage than most--so why is it that we still are treated like greater monsters yet? Is it simply that we're not strong enough to
demand the Heavens withdraw their curses?"
She loomed in, her gold burning gaze searing past Aretaphila's own challenge, driving her back to her own heart.
"So yes, I am frustrated, I am tired, I do not
need recognition for what deeds I can perform--I will do them regardless. But I would certainly
like to feel like I'm more than some… Reserve treasure who is taken out in times of crisis, simply because
speaking with people does not come naturally to me!."
She took a deep breath, steadying herself further.
"That's why I want to change things. If the Heavens won't accept us, then fuck the Heavens--I want to make a world for us that
won't delight in our suffering. But I hate the fact that I'll be weak for so long in order to become strong--that I'll be weak enough that a single enemy expert at the wrong place could crush me in spite of my work. That I have to watch my peers and elders die while I sit back leisurely refining my cultivation to perfection--always watching the numbers change to where a single blow at the wrong place and time will kill us before we reach that point."
Aretaphila tilted her head, confusion warring over her features. Memories coming forth, unbidden. The sensation of a breeze hidden in the bowels of the desert. Of desperate scrabbling, crawling through darkness of the long dead and desperate, seeking to leave behind a legacy. Desperation, tired dogged persistence, exhaustion and weariness on the brink of collapse as nothing more than the thought of "once more" sustaining herself through stink and overcoming a Formation Building bandit.
The sharp tunes of a Bloody Devil echoing over the shapeless masses of stone and dunes. A Core Formation pursuing her endlessly over a sense of inferiority. Desperate hiding and endless refinement of control over Demonic Tunes, refining the gift of the body endlessly just to stay hidden for ten years. Atrocity after atrocity committed before her eyes, the only survivor of countless villages again and again and
again.
The feeling of being the one who was
strong, and the sense of emptiness that came from senseless slaughter. Two souls that would have made for great assets of the Clan, their cultivation and greed turned against them, power ran wild. Not for the sake of justice. Simply because it must be done.
Peaceful days, an old man who had so much with so little. A wide world beyond the desert and the weight of responsibility, just past the horizon.
A voice that shook the heavens, the wind spilling her voice into the verdant lands to the West, ever to the West.
"You think it's
suffering to do nothing?!" Aretaphila all but gasped in shock and realization, "You actually feel
guilty that you can't carry the world on your shoulders?!" Her remaining hand curled into a fist, "The hells is
wrong with you?!"
Two feet set themselves into the sand, as Aretaphila rears her arm back, expression set in a rictus of pure, blinding fury, "You're
jealous that you didn't get to nearly die at the hands of some bandit that had a Great Realm on you?!" A sharp crack, as her fist impacts it's target, "You think that somehow you're
lesser for not being there to be hunted down and suffering alone in the dark for
ten years as you desperately attempt to tie down a Blood Cannibal Elder?!"
Another crack, and Rina's face remains unmoving, still stuck in an expression of confusion and growing horror.
"You idiot! There's nothing worth being
jealous about! Why do you think we all work so hard?!" A third crack, a fracture line going through the center of Aretaphila's emaciated fist from the force of the blow, "We're all a Clan! All Family! We all take on our burdens because this shitty world would kill us all with half a chance! Because it would kill
you!"
The snapped half hand moves to gesture weakly towards the Waycity behind them, even now in the throes of celebration of their hard won victory, "What makes you or I different from the people back there? Not just our Juniors, but the mortals that we support and protect? Our vassals, too weak to look after themselves, too weak to throw off the predations of the Blood Path?"
"I know that!" Rina snapped back, blinking some tears out of her eyes. "I know I shouldn't be thinking that! It's a
good thing that my path's advanced without any real hiccups so far! But when I look at the charts, and I see the bleeding everyone's doing--I can't just
ignore that! I don't want to be someone who's ignorant to what's going on just because it hurts me to find out!" She slumps over.
"I'm not trying to be some holy martyr or something, I
know my position is a good thing. But knowing it doesn't make me
feel it when we're all supposed to be working together as one and I just
keep walking away with nothing more than bruises and dents that'll be better after a week's rest. When I see the looks on their eyes where they look down on me for being the darling of the clan, who's never seen a day's real danger in her life. How am I supposed to feel like I'm doing my part when the first thing on their mind is how easy it's been for me? That people forget about me except as some measuring stick the moment the crisis is past?"
Aretaphila flinches at that last comment, her expression faltering as it strikes deeply and resonates. Had she been any different, comparing herself endlessly to the girl before her? This sheltered young Princess, gifted with all the opportunity and glory that a younger girl had desired before the depravities of the world had bled out to leave a young woman inhabiting the same flesh?
The thought hummed in her Dao-heart, the question of whether or not her
song was the same as all those other people that only saw this young Prin-
No.
Cracked and weathered and tarnished, a single note of
defiance still rang true.
"I never forgot."
Aretaphila pauses, the words coming out as if of their own accord, the static that had begun filling the air being
crushed by a single solemn ring, in spite of the gap between them. In that instant, the pain and anguish and frustration didn't matter as the injured young woman looked upon the undamaged higher realm in front of her.
She looked at
Rina Callista.
Idly, she looked down at her own hands, the pain was a familiar one. Not as intense as the Dao-deep exhaustion brought about by her exertion. It was almost like fleeing Ju-Shui Yú again, but…
refreshing, somehow.
"I think you don't understand just how much it hurts to be the one waiting in the back," She says at last, one eye closing again as she slips her broken hands into the pockets of her armored pants, "Because speaking from experience? It's neither better nor worse than taking damage from the front." She turns to look to the East, where the Uncast Molds even now bustle with thousands of mortal civilians, the bones of dead villages long forgotten, lost to the sands and wind.
"It's all just pain, in the end. Cultivation is pain, you know? Just like there's Infinite Dao. So too are there different kinds of pain. Different kinds of experience. The pain of terror. The pain of surviving. The pain of death and torture and being desperately out of your depth." Aretaphila shrugs, before lifting out her fractured hand and waggling it towards the young woman behind her.
"The pain of watching a friend torture herself over something silly."
Aretaphila sighs, the blood on her forehead having dried up, gathering dust and sand in the arid air, before turning back towards Rina.
"You know why there isn't any difference between yourself and those weaker than you?" Once again the Myia scion turns a single eyed gaze towards the Callista, "Because we all are protected. Because we all do our best. And because the world tries its best to hurt all of us for the sake of some messed up sense of values that grind us all under foot. What you're going through isn't any different than what anyone else in our Clan is experiencing." Sunken cheeks twitch into a smirk, "We're Cultivators. A wound of the heart is just as deadly as a wound of the flesh. Don't think that just because you're sad that that means what you're going through is anything less than what everyone else endures."
Aretaphila breathes in deeply, turning back towards Pleuron, new strength entering her diminished frame, "Even Old Gold wouldn't be where he is without the Mortals keeping our lands running. We're all one Clan, one Family, just because it's a bit thicker in you doesn't mean that we don't all share the same blood, right?" Her vision blurs, the limits of even stubbornness asserting themselves with a vengeance.
"Don't feel like just because people don't notice that you're the one doing it, doesn't mean that what you do goes unappreciated. You said people sang my praises, right?" Aretaphila blinks, and begins walking forward before her strength runs out entirely,
"But did you know? This was my second time facing a Core Formation Cultivator." Her head turns to glance back at Rina with a cocky smirk, "They're not so tough, right?"
"They're strong, but if one's fighting someone like us, they're also kinda stupid" Rina almost automatically spits out. "There's just… There's no profit in it for them, if you can just make them realize that--they'll fall apart."
"I… Already knew about that" Rina whispered, pressing her fingers together. "I kind of try to keep up on the postings everyone else is up to, so I can learn from it all--where they get it right and where they get it wrong so I can do better myself." She turns a little pink at that admittance.
She looked up then at the handwave back, and winced as one of the fingers dropped loose. Should she mention Oh
no, that wasn't healthy at all was it...
Maybe this wasn't so bad after all. Sure, most people didn't want to speak with her--either through intimidation, or through distaste, or through any number of other reasons.
But one person was better than nothing at all. Right?
